6 Reasons Why You Need To Localize Your App?

by
sehar-nadeem /Jul 13, 2018

It is the year 2025. You are drafting out a plan to go global in a board meeting with your staff. Some of your managers come up with an idea of expansion to other countries through localization.
You wonder why you have never thought of it before.
Localization, or the alteration of company offerings to meet the needs of the target communities is not only a means of adapting your business to suit another country. It pertains more specifically to adapting company offerings according to locale-specific expectations.

But why exactly do you need to localize your app?

According to a research published by Gartner Inc., 2017, 268 billion downloads of mobile applications will generate more than $77 billion worth of revenues in the coming 5 years. This is to suggest that mobile applications are something you should definitely look out for if you are ready to take this globalization journey.

Localization of apps should be on top of the list of priorities for these simple and straightforward reason.

1. Better exposure to an international audience
It is estimated that there are approximately 3,751 million internet users in the world today. That means localization of your apps would expose you to 3,751 million people out there. While no business would want to take the risk of losing such a big audience, it is difficult—if not impossible to reach out to all of these people.

This does not mean you give up the struggle.

Your business stands a fair chance of exposure if you decide to localize your applications. App localization will come together with a “digital localization”, the localization of your digital platforms based on linguistic, cultural, functional, and technical requirements. Achieve this digital localization and you are good to go.

2. Expansion of your business
According to some statistics, the 3 biggest app markets of the world are the United States, Japan, and South Korea. Together they generate a revenue greater than every other country combined.

This is a huge opportunity. And one that is certainly not worth missing.
A seamless localization of your apps can be a way to take advantage of this highly lucrative market, allowing you to expand further with your software, mobile, E-commerce, and other applications.

3. Acquaintances with multiple languages
Did you know that with just two additional languages, you will reach more than half of the global market?
This presents us with a simple equation: if you have an app that is already in the English language, and if you go ahead and translate your app in 2 languages (preferably Japanese, Mandarin, and Korean) you will have access to over half of the globe.
That is the power of multilinguism in app localization.

4. Enhanced customer experience
App localization is all about providing enhanced customer experience. In fact, customer satisfaction is the driving force behind most businesses. Take the example of Home Depot—a home improvement company that uses location for delivering customer experience. The brand’s app looks at shopper’s region to get the localized design trends. In this way, a customer in California would receive different recommendations than someone residing in Vegas. The displays of available products makes the customer experience even more enhanced one.

5. Intensified marketing effectiveness
Before you set out to launch an extensive app localization, an extensive understanding of your own marketing campaigns is necessary. Narrowing these international campaigns to number of local markets may be helpful in improving marketing effectiveness. After all, there is little point in paying for marketing channels worldwide when your prepared campaign is effective in only a single one.

6. Cut-back on Costs
This is one of the main reasons why app localization is such a good idea. Localization costs much less than development so if you have already spent thousands of dollars on developing a software for an international market, that cost will be counted as “sunk cost” if it fails to strike a chord with the target audience. On the other hand, a localized software application can do wonders for your business as it would be tailored to fit the demands of the customers.

Afterword:
While app localization may seem like a costly endeavor, making it part of the development process at an early stage by using appropriate tools such as style guides and interfaces can put you on the path to globalization.
You can reap the benefits of app localization such as exposure to a wide audience, increased sales, and reduced costs. Moreover, app localization can help you get featured on the App Store as well. A little marketing effort, an inherent drive, and the right localization partner are all that you need to localize your apps for global audience.